


Enough To Bury Our Home

by sequence_fairy



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 17:49:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6088936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/pseuds/sequence_fairy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Hollow takes over, Rukia does what she has to do to stop him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Enough To Bury Our Home

**Author's Note:**

> First attempt at Bleach!fic, no beta, all mistakes are my own.

The mask covers his face, turns his eyes to glowing yellow and inky black, makes his laugh cold and ruthless and it makes her heart stop in her chest.

“Ichigo,” she breathes, fingers wrapped around the hilt of  _ Sode no Shirayuki _ before she even thinks. He laughs, swinging  _ Zangetsu _ in a wide arc over his head. “Ichigo,” she says again, her voice hoarse and ragged. He just laughs, and spins on his heel, disappearing into  _ shunpo _ with a fizz of  _ reiatsu _ .

“Rukia,” he says, voice both his and not his, echoing and strange, from directly behind her, and Rukia gasps, turning with her sword raised.  _ Zangetsu _ crashes down on her blade and the impact rings out around them. He bellows, raising his sword and bringing it down again. Rukia meets his blow, spinning out from underneath his blade.

She can’t keep this up for long, she knows, Ichigo is much more talented with a blade then she will ever be, but he can’t use  _ kido _ to save his life, and she fires off blast after blast of white lightening, driving him away, keeping him off balance. He roars, and the ground shakes. She feels the sick, oily drag of his tainted  _ reiatsu _ against her own, and holds her stance.

“Dance,” she murmurs, turning  _ Sode no Shirayuki _ in her hands. Ichigo - no, she thinks, because she cannot do this otherwise,he is  _ not _ Ichigo, he is a Hollow, and she _will_ kill him because that is her _job_ \- waits for her attack, standing on the air, the tattered black robe of his  _ bankai _ swirling around his ankles. Her sword turns white in her hands and the air around her lowers in temperature.

“What are you waiting for Rukia?” The thing that was Ichigo taunts, and it’s all the warning she has before he charges. He’s fast, but she’s spent her whole life sparring against opponents who were taller and stronger than she is, and she can get under his guard and the first time she lands a strike, her blade biting into the flesh of his arm, he howls and whirls away.

His blood drips down the blade of her sword, and drops off the tip into the snow that crunches under her feet. She feels the burn of the thousand places the edge of his sword got her, and her own blood mingles with his on the snow. He comes at her again with a roar. The sweep of his sword through the air with the ruby-edged black of his power crackling along it’s edge, makes her stomach clench in fear. She has nothing to stand up to  _ Getsuga Tensho _ with, but she charges him anyway, phasing in and out until she’s close enough to reach him.

He is too slow to parry, surprise at her sudden appearance widening the eyes behind the mask, and she’s under his guard. She is surprised herself when her sword sinks into his chest, surprised enough that she follows through on the thrust and buries it to the hilt. The mask shatters, and Rukia looks into Ichigo’s face.

\---- 

The sword in his chest hurts. That’s the first thing Ichigo notices when his eyes open once again. It’s buried to the hilt, and he chokes on his own blood. There are hands still wrapped around its hilt - small, pale hands that are covered in blood, the same blood that is staining the front of his robes and dripping onto the ground at his feet. His vision is dimming, but he follows the line of the hands, down to arms covered in black fabric like his own, and he follows the arms up to a set of thin shoulders - no, he realises,  _ strong _ shoulders that are firmly resolved, and then up again to the face. 

Her violet eyes are wide, and tears pool in them. She is pale and her black hair whips around her face in the wind created by the release of their  _ reiatsu _ . Her mouth is set in a grim and determined line, but her jaw clenches and Ichigo notes that she’s trembling all over. Sweat has dampened the hair at her temples and he’s close enough to her that he can feel the heat of her body.

“Ichigo,” she breathes, voice hoarse and ragged and Ichigo looks down at the sword in his chest again.

“Ru-” he tries, coughs up and spits out a mouthful of blood. His legs tremble. “Rukia,” he grits out, “Rukia why?” To his own ears his voice sounds plaintive and childlike, and he remembers suddenly asking the same question of his mother, while she lay on the ground beside him, so still.

“I’m sorry,” Rukia says, and lets go of her sword. She steps back, and like a puppet whose strings have been cut, Ichigo drops to his knees. “I’m sorry,” she says again, falling to her own knees in front of him. He blinks and his vision sharpens enough for him to see the myriad of injuries she’s suffered. Her robes are tattered, sliced through in places and blood seeps sluggishly out of a cut over one eye, and down the side of her face. He clenches his fists, feeling the bite of the hilt of his sword.

He throws  _ Zangetsu _ away with a clatter, and Rukia’s eyes dart towards the movement of his hand. He brings his hands up to the hilt of her sword, wrapping numb fingers around it with sheer force of will. “Rukia, please,” he says, and Rukia doesn’t hesitate. Together, they pull her blade from his body. 

The pain is immense. It is fiery hot and ice cold and it consumes every ounce of his remaining strength not to pass out. He gags at the gush of blood that accompanies the release of sword from flesh, and his head swims.

“Rukia,” he says, and wonders why the only thing he seems to be able to articulate is her name. He brings one hand up to her face, fingers skating along the skin of her jaw. Her skin is so soft, Ichigo thinks, but she is so strong, he wonders if her bones are made of the same steel as her blade. He knows the bite of that steel in her spine, knows the feel of it in his soul. She has never let him get away with anything, so of course, she would not let him get away with this.

The tears that were welling in her eyes spill over now, and Ichigo feels a twinge of another kind of pain deep in his gut. He’s never wanted so much to be able to forget, to be able to unsee, to be able to undo as he does now. He has so many regrets. Listing them would be futile, so instead, he lets his thumb stroke the fullness of her bottom lip.

His Hollow is far away, battered to nothing by Rukia’s strength, burned away by the touch of the ice of her blade. She kneels in front of him, saying nothing, doing nothing, and Ichigo holds her chin in his hand, and watches her eyes. He couldn’t look away from them if he tried. He can feel the drag of death on his limbs, and soon the hand on her chin becomes too heavy to hold up anymore and he lets it fall into his lap. He slumps forward, and she catches him.

She holds him up while the last of his breath rattles in his lungs, enfolds him in her embrace and he smiles into the skin of her neck. He inhales slowly, and his exhale is her name. Her hands tighten around him, and for a moment, it is enough that she is here.

Death here is not like death in the living world, death here is final and binding and he is going to die for real on this hill, her tears on the palm of his hand, her voice in his ears and her name on his lips.

“Ichigo, please don’t –” she says, and Ichigo dies. 


End file.
